The unspoken Name

In my experience, casual pronunciation of the divine Name is a telltale sign of an evangelical having attended a Protestant seminary. Sometimes it’s as minimal as having read Walter Brueggemann. (If he can do it, so can I!) Old Testament scholars in general can be the culprit, but far from always; of all Christians they’re usually the most familiar with Jewish writing and thought—with living Jews themselves and the ongoing practice of the synagogue—which means they tend to know better.

I decided a long time ago that I would forbear from enunciating the Name, if only out of respect for Jewish piety. There were always additional reasons, but I saw no excuse to transgress on thousands of years of Jewish and Christian devotional and liturgical reticence out of nothing more than an inflated sense of contemporary exegetical confidence.

In his latest book, Irrevocable: The Name of God and the Unity of the Christian Bible (2022), Kendall Soulen provides an additional reason for reverent non-vocalization of the Name, a reason so simple I can’t believe I’ve never encountered it before.

Start with why certain pastors and writers, usually but not exclusively evangelical, choose to vocalize the Name. First, because a name is meant to be spoken. God introduced himself by name to his people; shouldn’t we use it? Second, because the rabbinical practice of building fences around the Torah is not Christian; if gentile believers are not bound by ceremonial Law, much less rabbinic elaboration thereof, then they (we) have no reason to honor this convention while ignoring all others. Third and finally, the Bible itself does not forbid saying the Name. Absent explicit divine prohibition, we are free to do as we please (with sober reverence and pious speech, you’d think it would go without saying, but anecdotally that is far from the case—the hypothetical reconstruction “Y-a-h-w-e-h” becomes at once nickname and talisman, even as it signals the insider status and erudition of the speaker).

It’s worth mentioning a fourth reason that, thankfully, I’ve not seen in the wild: namely, that “YHWH” belongs to the old covenant; that it was God’s Name; that, therefore, this Name is of no lasting relevance to Christians, since it was replaced/superseded by either “Jesus” or “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” or both. Such a view would authorize merely historical reference to the Name, minus piety, faith, or reverence. Call this nominal Marcionism.

Here, in any case, is how Soulen responds: Nonpronunciation of YHWH is not unbiblical. Its chief practitioners are none other than the apostles. The New Testament is positively drenched in pious regard for the Name; you only have to read for a few verses before you discover a newly devised verbal mechanism to circumvent pronouncing the Name: the Power, the Blessed One, the Lord, He Who Sits On The Throne, the Living One, the Name That is Above Every Name—the list goes on and on.

And can you guess who is the principal model of piety regarding God’s Name?

It’s Jesus. He whose prayer begins, “Our Father,” turns first of all to God’s Name, asking that it be hallowed, consecrated, sanctified. Read the Sermon on the Mount. Read Jesus’s teachings on vows (in Matthew 6 and in Matthew 23). Read Jesus’s interrogation by the Sanhedrin (especially in Mark 14). Read Jesus’s “conversation” with God the Father in John 12 (the only such “back and forth” in any of the Gospels) about glorifying the Father’s Name and, later, Jesus’s high priestly prayer in John 17 regarding (again) the Father’s Name—which he, Jesus, says he received from the Father before he was sent into the world. That Name isn’t “Father”: Jesus is the Father’s Son. The Father’s Name is YHWH. Yet it is also Jesus’s own name, not only in this world but from all eternity. (Even at his birth his human name reveals it: Yeshua—YHWH is salvation.)

For all this, however, the Name is never spoken. Not by Jesus, not by the Twelve, not by the apostle to the gentiles. Always we find euphemism, circumlocution, indirection, silence.

Hence when Christians, like Jews, avoid verbalizing the holy Name of the Lord God of Israel—in prayer, in devotional reading of Scripture, in public worship—they are not following man-made, unbiblical tradition. They are following the New Testament’s own authoritative example. No document, ancient or modern, is so ruthlessly consistent in avoiding enunciating YHWH (aloud or in writing) as is the New Testament. The apostles are authoritative here as elsewhere. And they are only following Jesus’s own example.

Shouldn’t we?